Isis Browser Code Released

The Isis Project has released the source code for the Isis Browser, a core application of HP’s webOS platform.

Currently, the browser, written using the Enyo framework, is a work in progress, incorporating the latest open source technologies, such as QtWebKit and JavaScriptCore, into the webOS platform.

According to the developer blog, webOS requires a fast, standards-compliant web browser engine to provide the core of the standalone browser and the rendering technology for the platform and its apps. Thus, the developers chose QtWebKit to power webOS. The blog states that WebKit is also the point of integration between the underlying System Manager, which will be open sourced later this year, and the web rendering layer of webOS.

According to the blog, the developers have benchmarked the new Isis webOS browser and have found it to be extremely responsive compared with other browsers made for general consumption. Isis Browser is compatible with HP TouchPad devices running webOS 3.0.5. It supports HTML5 and CSS3 as well as legacy products like Adobe Flash and Netscape Plug-in API (NPAPI) plugins to allow them to run in non-X11 environments.

The source code for the Isis Browser stack, QtWebKit, and Qt 4.8 is available on GitHub and is distributed under the Apache license. Project information and the technical documentation for this release can be found on GitHub and the project website at http://isis-project.org/.